Sandy's Say: Busted
…Quite by accident I had discovered that there is an amazing window of opportunity in a child’s developing intellect before they even start school and the best way to stimulate this is by reading to them on a daily basis…
Sandy James extols the joys and benefits of reading aloud to a child. If only every youngster was lucky enough to have such a mother!
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It was sheer, drowning exhaustion that made me do it. Not only did I have an eighteen month old toddler of my own who had a Thatcheristic tendency of snatching just a few hours of sleep a night, but during the day I was responsible for four other children under the age of two.
To enable me to raise my own son whilst still covering the cost of essential groceries, I became a Day Care Mother. Typically my day consisted of wiping bottoms and noses, cleaning up food, juice, paint, playdough and glitter glue, refereeing tiffs, washing dollies, kicking balls, playing trains, making sandcastles, dressing up and dancing to music. By the time that the last child departed each evening, all I could manage to do was to flop onto my bed. My little shadow would clamber up next to me and we would read picture books together.
So it was, without the slightest bit of conscientiousness and with no knowledge of the benefits, that I bestowed on my child a lifetime of literacy and a love of learning. The local library allowed us to take out twenty books at a time and we would spread them all over the bed and have a “feast of stories.” At first, I would deliberately pin my son against me to stop him from wriggling away but soon the arm around him became a comforting requirement of the ritual. One couldn’t have a story without the cuddle.
Initially I felt self conscious at hearing my own voice reading out aloud but I soon got the hang of it and my sound effects became quite animated. One day I heard my father being told off, “No Grandad, you don’t say ‘boom’ you say ‘BOOM!!’ It had been several decades since anyone had last found the courage to critique my father’s reading technique.
Soon we had read every book from the children’s section of four different libraries. One night, when my son was three, we read a story about a polar bear who spent most of his time surrounded by snow and ice. The next day we were out shopping when my son suddenly exclaimed, “Mummy, that word says ‘ice.’” It took me a while to realise that he was reading the word ‘pol-ICE’ on the car alongside us. Twice more that day he squealed, “That word says ‘ice!’” By now I was beginning to understand his way of perceiving things and I saw that the full words were ‘ju-ICE’ and ‘serv-ICE.’
He was so delighted with himself that there was no stopping him after that and his reading went ahead in leaps and bounds. He began to teach himself by reading off the front of buses, words such as ‘ZOO’ and ‘CITY’, which caused a minor problem for him when he started writing because he only wrote in capitals. Quite by accident I had discovered that there is an amazing window of opportunity in a child’s developing intellect before they even start school and the best way to stimulate this is by reading to them on a daily basis.
One last lesson that my son learned from books was unexpected. As I mentioned, he used to cuddle up against me whilst we read stories. One day my mother, who is considerably better endowed than I am, was reading to him and he just couldn’t find a comfortable spot to rest his head. I watched in amusement as he turned around to study the situation. I could almost see the cogs of his mind turning and I watched it dawning on his little face that bosoms, in fact, come in different sizes.
Now there is a vitally important life lesson for any young fellow albeit, I’ll wager, that most young men don’t acquire it through reading.
